ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
April 23, 2008
Get Real! Open a Book
Kid Reporter Yunhee Hyun talks with First Lady Laura Bush about the book she wrote with her daughter Jenna
Read All About It hit stores on April 22. The two former teachers drew on their experience in the classroom to create a zany cast of characters, including a lunch lady named Ms. Gravy and a music teacher named Ms. Tonedeaf. In the story, self-proclaimed class clown Tyrone thinks he's too cool to read. He prefers things that are real, like playing freeze tag or even solving the math problem of the day.
 |  DON HEINY FOR TIME FOR KIDS Kid Reporter Yunhee Hyun meets with First Lady Laura Bush. |
One day, everything changes for him. The books his teacher, Miss Libro, reads to the class start to come alive for Tyrone...literally! He comes face to face with Jasper the Ghost, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin and a fire-breathing dragon. By the end of the book, Tyrone realizes that reading is an activity as real as playing freeze tag with friends, and maybe even a bit more fun.
Is there a little bit of Tyrone in you? This mother-daughter writing team hopes that with every turn of the page, you'll discover new worlds that you won't soon want to leave. TFK sat down with Laura Bush for the story of how this book came about.
TFK:
What inspired you to write Read All About It?
Mrs. Bush:
I was inspired by (my former) students. I used to tell my girls, Barbara and Jenna, stories about the students I taught. For example, after I read stories to my students, they liked to pretend that the characters from the book were alive and in our classroom. If I read Charlotte's Web to them, they wanted to pretend to be Charlotte the spider or another character for the rest of the day. When you love to read and you read good books, the characters do come to life. And that's what happens to the main character, Tyrone, in our book. He says he rules the school and he doesn't like books. In fact, he says that books are "so last year." But his teacher keeps reading to him, even though he launches a paper spaceship instead of listening. When the teacher says, "Everybody loves this book," Tyrone looks around and he sees that they do. None of the children even saw him launch that spaceship. Then he starts to listen. So that's what inspired me--real children.
TFK:
Is Tyrone or any of the other characters based on a particular student of yours?
Mrs. Bush:
Tyrone isn't based on just one specific student. He is based on several boys whom Jenna and I taught. These boys thought they didn't like books because they only liked things that were real. The teacher, Miss Libro, is based on Jenna and me. But it was Jenna who thought of many of the funny names, such as Ms. Toadskin the science teacher and Mr. Lumsquitz the math teacher. And Jenna really did have a coach named Coach Smith, and he's the only one with a common name. Did you like it that the music teacher's name is Ms. Tonedeaf and the lunch lady's name is Ms. Gravy? That's funny, isn't it?
TFK:
What was it like to work with your daughter Jenna on this book?
Mrs. Bush:
It was so much fun. It really was not that difficult at all. We planned the book together. Your readers might be interested to know that most picture books are only 32 pages. So we laid out the story on 32 blank pages. We knew how we wanted the story to start and we knew how we wanted it to end. But then we had to figure out what would come in the middle without going over the 32-page limit. The other thing about children's books is, when you have a great illustrator, then you don't need to say everything in words because you can see it in the pictures. So when you're writing a children's book, you have to be very careful about the words you choose because you don't really need them all.
TFK:
What do you hope children will learn from your book?
Mrs. Bush:
I hope children will learn that characters in books really can come alive. And I hope that when children finish this picture book, they'll feel just a little sad because that was all there was to read about those characters.
TFK:
Did the President read your book? Did he like it?
Mrs. Bush:
He read our book right after we finished writing it, before we had even sent it to the illustrator. He liked it a lot. He thought it was very cute and funny. Of course, he read it again when we received our very first copy.
TFK:
What will you do when you're done being the First Lady?
Mrs. Bush:
I'll go back home to Texas, and I hope to keep working on all the projects I worked on before. I'll always work with children and libraries. I also hope to work with women in Afghanistan and to make sure that little girls in Afghanistan can go to school.
